More Than Fine

Just a few weeks ago, I was wrapping up a skype session with my emetophobia therapist. I had the calendar on my phone pulled up like I usually do to mark down our next session. For several months, we met with consistency every Thursday evening for an hour. Then, after some considerable progress had been made on my part, we transistioned to every other week. Occasionally, one of us would have a schedule conflict and it would then become three or four weeks between our sessions. But the tone had started to change. I wasn't having to work as hard to peel back the layers of my anxiety. I was becoming more comfortable with my own vulnerability. I noticed that we were talking more about "life stuff" and less about throwing up. The pictures and videos (yes, videos) of people being sick were becoming less gruesome and more, well, just people getting sick.

"Well, you tell me when you'd like to see me again," she said.

*blink blink*

What? I needed clarification.

"You've worked really hard to get to this point and you've got all the tools you will ever need when you start to find yourself feeling anxious. You're ready to just go and live your life now, and see how your emetophobia reacts with it. But my guess is that you're gonna be just fine. More than fine, actually."

This was it. She was breaking up with me. Not only that, but she was employing the whole, "well, it's obvious that you're moving on to bigger and better things, so now it's time for me to let you go" tactic. I sat there for a second, stunned, and looked down at the following Thursday's date on my phone. The fact that it was pure white nothing-ness was terrifying. Keep in mind that up until this point, I had been gradually exposing myself to pictures of vomit. First it was pencil sketches, then cartoons, then on to actual pictures of puke piles- chunky vomit, watery-vomit, dried splotches on roadways and floors. Then on to pictures of people mid-heave with their heads hanging over toilet bowls and trash cans. And finally, the last level of desensitization: watching entire video clips of real life people tossing their cookies for one reason or another, complete with sounds: carsickness, stomach flu, one too many shots of crappy vodka and one poor, unsuspecting girl who had her roommate spike her morning coffee with syrup of ipecac. (Why anyone thinks this stuff is worthy to 1) be shot on video and 2) be put on youtube, is truly beyond what I can comprehend. But maybe that's why I'm in therapy to begin with).

The point is, that moment of realizing I was being "let go" was in many ways more petrifying to me than anything I had experienced up until that point in my therapy. What now? I wanted to argue with her, that no, I wasn't ready. I was like a college graduate who had dutifully completed all of her degree requirements but was suddenly paralyzed with fear at the thought of actually walking across the stage and accepting the diploma she had worked so hard for. Suddenly I wasn't sure I wanted it. I was afraid that if I allowed myself to believe that I was finally strong enough to stand with my feet firmly in place, that maybe it would all be an illusion and the ground that I thought was so steady would give way beneath me.

We have some friends who live out on the west coast that got a real kick out of the devastating earthquake that shook the east coast last August. Not because they were insensitive, but because we all flipped our nut over something that they probably experience a couple of times a year. Unfortunately, for them, earthquakes are inevitable, so the only thing they can do is practice being prepared for one when it hits. The safest places are in doorways and under sturdy tables. (Whatever you do, don't run outside like I did and look up at the sky to rule out the rapture). Since our friends have young kids, they do their best to drill them on what to do without freaking them out in the process. Children in schools participate in earthquake drills on a regular basis and practice quickly getting into position under their desks or the cafeteria tables. My friend's youngest daughter asked her one day why they couldn't just hang out under the table all the time, just in case. And to that, her mom simply said, "because that's not really living, sweetie. That's just being afraid to live."

As I reflect on the first few sessions I ever had with Anna, I remember that she never promised me a life without anxiety. She did, however, promise me that I could start living again, in spite of it. But it requires that I resist the urge to hang out under my dining room table, for all of the "just in cases," that 99% of the time never come to fruition anyway. There's nothing wrong with taking shelter when a storm comes out of nowhere, but once it passes, it can be easy to forget that we're supposed to crawl back out, hug our loved ones, and begin to rebuild.


Lyrics from a song that was always on repeat during some of my darker times. . .


"When I wake in the morning, I want to blow into pieces

I want more than just okay, more than just okay

When I'm up with the sunrise, I want more than just blue skies

I want more than just okay, more than just okay

I'm not giving up, not giving up now

Not giving up, not backing down

More than fine, more than bent on getting by

More than fine, more than just okay."


(Switchfoot, More Than Fine)